Pre-Roman Kempsey

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• A piece of iron (possibly a cloak clasp) dated 1500-800 BC
• Pre-Roman pottery excavated in Kempsey
• 180,000-year-old Mammoth
• The Iron-age History of Bredon Hill
• Whittingdon Tump

A piece of iron dated 1500-800 BC
According to 'Kempsey Collection' page 9 , a piece of iron dated 1500-800 BC was dug up in the Court Meadow area, and is now in the Foregate Museum, Worcester. At that time the River Severn was tidal at Kempsey, and there was extensive marshland and forest in the Severn valley.

Pre-Roman pottery excavated in Kempsey
One sherd (a fragment of pottery) was discovered in the Court House Excavations, in January 1956 a team of archaeologists led by Helen O'Neil. The sherd was from the body of a hand-made vessel, black, made of fairly soft paste with small crushed grit and larger particles and some quartz. The paste can be matched from Early Iron Age sherds from Salmonsbury Camp, Bourton-on-the-Water, Glos. It is similar to ware from Bredon and Sutton Wells.
Reference: "The excavation of the Iron age Camp on Bredon Hill", Glos. Arch. Journal, XCV. "Excavations at Sutton Wells, Herefordshire", Arch. Journal, CX.

A Mammoth Sheds Light on the Stone Age (1992)
A mammoth called Millicent is helping

Diorama of Ice-age Worcestershire in Worcester Art Gallery and Museum. Click here for a larger version.

archæologists to rewrite British pre-history. Dating tests on fossils found with the 180,000-year-old animal's bones have confirmed the existence of a previously contentious era within Europe's Stone Age.

Over the past 15 years scholars have argued over whether Britain experienced a long, warm period - a sort of natural global warming - about 160,000 - 180,000 years ago. Until now, geological evidence for this has been scanty, the only clear indication of it coming from animal remains at four sites in the Thames Valley.

For the first time, however, clear zoological and geological evidence has come from a single site: Strensham in Worcestershire. Scientists led by Professor Russell Coope of Birmingham University (now of Royal Holloway University of London), and Clare de Roussignac of Worcestershire County Council have found remains of at least two mammoths, a red deer, 119 species of beetle, 28 species of mollusc and 40 plant species. Most of the mammoth bones belonged to a female who perished, aged about 30, after becoming stuck in a pond. The 10-foot high animal - initially dubbed Marmaduke by scientists - was found after close examination to have been female, and was duly renamed Millicent. She appears to have been born with a malformed lower leg bone, and probably had a marked limp.

Millicent has been donated to Hartlebury Castle Museum by the owners of the site, Associated Land Improvement Holdings, but it will take a few years to prepare her for public display. The latest news (in 1998) is that the British Museum in London want to keep her, they say she is too important to go to Hartlebury.

Research into all the animal and plant species found at Strensham is being funded by Severn-Trent Water; it was during the construction of one of its pumping stations that Millicent came to light. The warm period occurred in the middle of the 100,000-year ice epoch, which preceded the glacial era during which modern humans developed. (Source: The Independent, June 2nd 1992)

"In 1963, a barrow was discovered just outside the parish boundary, near to Well Gate at the top of Bredon Hill. It contained two Bell-beakers, four arrowheads and a scraper. These artefacts belonged to the Beaker people, who settled this area around 1750 B.C.

Abutting the parish boundary, on the summit of Bredon Hill, lie the remains of an Iron Age Camp. It is thought that it was occupied between 200 and 100 B.C. and that probably it was abandoned following a barbarous attack. This conclusion was reached after several skeletons were uncovered during archæological excavations of the site in 1935-7. The presence of the Iron Age people nearer to the village is confirmed by the few pieces of pottery that have been discovered and attributed to that period."

Reference: Wilkes, Nils 1996 A History of Eckington, Worcester, The Trinity Press ISBN 0 9528051 0 3, page 8.

P.J Reynolds writes:
"The camp was built in the 1st. century B.C. It is defended by two lines of ramparts, the inner rock-cut ditch older than the outer.

Throughout the country at this time there were feverish efforts to strengthen the fortification of hill forts. A tribe from Belgium was invading the country early in the first century B.C. The Belgae, the last invaders before the Romans, had left the continent under pressure from further east. The Belgae possessed far superior technology in warfare and farming. They had devised a plough that could cope with the heavy loam soil of the valley.

When the inner entrance of the camp was excavated, the mutilated skeletons of 50 men were found. No skulls were found. The Belgae probably dismembered the dead and made slaves of the women and children.

The skeletons had never been moved, so the local town must have been deserted."

Whittingdon Tump
Max Sinclair tells me that Whittingdon Tump is a glacial deposit made of clay. It may be a glacial feature officially called a 'drumlin', but drumlins are usually long, and the Tump is conical. It could be a 'ground moraine' and the clay could be 'till'. This means that the ice sheets probably extended as far south as Kempsey, and maybe to Ashleworth in Gloucestershire, where Max tells me there is a similar formation. Therefore, Kempsey was probably covered by ice in the ice-ages.

© 1999 - Andy Morrall

Last updated 7^th November 2004.

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